Introduction to Planned Giving
Inspiring a Tradition

How You Can Make a Difference in the Lives of Young Men and Women

The Planned Giving Technique
How, as a Southern Miss benefactor, you can use your giving to achieve personal goals, enhance your financial security, and help shape the University's future.

Designing Your Gift
How you might create an athletic scholarship so the success you now enjoy is made possible for others.

Inspiring a Tradition
One person's gift can inspire a tradition. You truly have the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of over 350 student athletes who participate in the athletic programs at Southern Miss. These student athletes provide more media attention than any amount of advertising could accomplish. Gifts to Southern Miss become a living record of your legacy. It is a reflection of the achievements, ideals, and dreams of the generations past that have shaped a university of distinction. Southern Miss benefactors share a sense of pride because their commitment makes a difference at the University and ultimately in the society it serves. This can now happen at The University of Southern Mississippi.

By virtue of their generosity, benefactors have enabled Southern Miss to achieve its status as a University of international preeminence. Each gift now helps to ensure a future of enduring strength, vitality, and growth for USM. Your commitment is one of the University's greatest assets.

Planned Giving
As a Southern Miss athletic benefactor, you can use your giving to achieve personal goals, to enhance your financial security, and to help shape the University's future. Planned giving is a technique of including charitable giving in your total financial plan. The government encourages philanthropy with advantageous tax treatment of gifts under both state and federal law.

Planned giving helps you receive the maximum benefits of these laws. Often these tax advantages allow you to make a greater gift than otherwise thought possible, while also benefiting your family and heirs. Many Southern Miss alumni and friends have chosen planned giving as a way to perpetuate their loyal support of the University beyond their lifetimes, while realizing benefits for themselves today.

The type of asset and the way it is given to the USM Foundation for Southern Miss Athletics determines the actual tax and financial benefits resulting from a gift. Certain planned gift arrangements provide you with an opportunity to diversify your holdings, turn highly appreciated assets into a gift that provides you income, and still enjoy the tax savings. With careful planning today, you may reduce or eliminate estate, inheritance, or gift taxes, allowing your family to receive the full benefits of your life's work. Thus, certain gift plans actually result in a greater amount of wealth passed on to family.

As with all financial decisions, a planned gift should be designed with care. The University's planned giving professionals will work closely and confidentially with you to ensure that your gift to Southern Miss achieves your individual goals and expresses your personal vision for USM.

Designing Your Gift
Through a gift, you might create a scholarship so the success you now enjoy is made possible for others. We trust that your interests might lie in enhancing the Southern Mississippi Athletic Program by helping a young student-athlete. Your gift can be an individual expression of your vision and goals.

As you begin to define your goals, there are some questions you might consider: What are my personal objectives and needs? What are my financial goals? What is the best asset to use to make my gift? Which gift plans can best accomplish my goals for my family and for USM?

The Eagle Club, with assistance from the USM Foundation, is a resource for you. The staff is experienced in gift planning and understands the importance of philanthropy as a part of a successful overall estate plan. We are available to assist you and your advisers as you consider the many opportunities presented in this informational material. Our goal is to present you with options and to help you make the best choice possible. We accomplish this by ensuring that your gift expresses your interest in the University and maximizes the benefits you and the University receives from your gift.

We hope you have decided that helping young men and women student athletes is a great way to benefit from your generosity and the Eagle Club staff is ready to assist you in shaping a gift. We recognize that each benefactor has special interests within the Athletic Department. By working together, the University and the benefactor create a distinctive gift that blends the individual's vision with the objectives of The University of Southern Mississippi.